Quote:
Originally Posted by jg6544
If I remember correctly, when the system was initially being planned, they rejected a line through Georgetown because the tracks would either have had to be carried across the Potomac on a bridge or the stations would have been too far underground were the tracks to go under the river.
|
From my understanding of the history of the DC Metro system, when the basic routes were established in 1968, there were several reasons that Georgetown was not included as a stop. One, is that Georgetown was not the busy retail and nightlife destination back then that it became. The DC Metro started out conceived more of a commuter system to reach the city core than a in-city metro system and that played a role. Second, the geography and geology is a challenge, not insurmountable, but would have been expensive to build with the technology and budget constraints of the time. But, now the lack of Metro stations in the Georgetown neighborhood is widely seen as the biggest gap in the DC Metro system in the DC core, people keep looking at options to build a Metro line through Georgetown.
I have not seen any specifics on how a Metro line would go from north of Rosslyn to Georgetown, but I doubt if it would utilize a bridge across the Potomac. The amount of land and property that would have to be taken for a bridge and then running a Metro line underground into the side of the embankment on the Georgetown side of the Potomac would be very difficult to acquire. I would expect the plans are for new tunnels under the Potomac with a deep station or two in Georgetown that would rise to just under M street. But this is all very long term conceptual planning. There is a set of presentation slides from last October on the PlanitMetro site which show the possible Blue and Yellow line new routes which might be of interest at
http://planitmetro.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/TAG-Meeting-05-October-21-2010-FINAL.pdf